In Loving Memory
by Maureen Painted Green
Summary: A tribute to Gilmore Girls, and the seven amazing years that it has given us.


**A/N: **From the moment it was announced that "Bon Voyage" would be the last episode of "Gilmore Girls", I knew I had to somehow pay tribute to this incredible show. For a while, I was at a loss as to how said tribute should remember the show, but one day, the first few lines of this story popped into my head and I took them and ran. This story is about Lorelai and Rory's life through the seven amazing years that we've shared with them. Remember the Gilmores.

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This is a love story. Plain and simple, complicated and confusing. Beautiful and tragic and flawed. This is a story of courage and hope, of hardships and good times. A story of togetherness and a story about being apart. This story will make you laugh and cry, or even laugh until tears fill your eyes. This story is many things, but above all, this story is a love story about a mother and he daughter.

The mother's name was Lorelai Gilmore and our story starts when she was 16 years old. She was in the hospital, in the delivery room to be exact, waiting to be handed her newborn baby. The nurse smiled at her as she placed the child into her arms and informed her that her baby was a girl. Lorelai couldn't do anything but stare at her beautiful child. The baby's conception and subsequent birth had been anything but expected, but the moment Lorelai held her daughter, she knew that the baby wasn't a mistake. She named the little girl Lorelai Leigh Gilmore and vowed to let her be whoever she chose to in this world.

Years passed and little Lorelai (who went by Rory) grew up. She passed through childhood with grace and ease, delighting in the smallest things. She loved butterflies and caterpillars, and all manner of living things. She was the nicest kid in the world, always inviting people to play when they looked lonely, or having a funeral for her latest caterpillar friend. The town of Stars Hollow, where the Gilmore girls lived was charmed by Lorelai and her beautiful daughter Rory. What Rory liked best growing up, though, wasn't the outdoors or the townspeople that loved her like their own child. Her favorite moments were those that she spent curled up on the couch with her mother watching movies and laughing. Playing pretend games with an over-imaginative Lorelai in the dark jungles of the living room. From the very beginning, Rory was a mama's girl.

Time marched on, as it always does, and before either of them knew it, Rory was in high school. During her second year at Stars Hollow High, she was so smart that she was accepted into a very selective private high school, Chilton. The new school was hard at first, and Rory had to work very hard to get into the swing of it, but eventually it all paid off. Pretty soon, she was in the top of her class and learning a lot. It was around this time that Rory met her first boyfriend, Dean Forrester. Dean and Rory became an item pretty quickly, which was a bit frightening to Lorelai, but eventually Dean became accepted into the exclusive Gilmore club.

Rory's high school years were a wonderful time for both Lorelai and Rory. They could always be found doing something together during those years, whether it was pigging out on junk food as they watched some obscure movie or hanging out at Luke's diner trying to convince Luke to give them more coffee. It wasn't all fun and games, like when Lorelai was engaged to Rory's teacher but realized the week before the wedding that she didn't love him. Even so, the two managed to stick together through it all.

They both had their romantic entanglements over the next few years, but none of those relationships really stuck. By the time Rory graduated from high school, both were ready for a new step in their lives. Rory would be going off the Yale University in the fall, and Lorelai would begin her dream of opening her own inn with her friend, Sookie. The graduation ceremony was something special, and though Lorelai promised herself she would not cry, she found herself bawling during Rory's Valedictorian speech. In the speech, Rory thanked her mother for everything she had given over the past eighteen years, and told her the person Rory most admired was her.

The college years brought a lot of change for both of them as Rory began to make huge strides towards her dream of becoming a journalist. Lorelai made good on her own dream and opened up the Dragonfly Inn at the end of Rory's first year at Yale. The inn was an instant success, and at the test run, Lorelai finally achieved her other (albeit hidden) dream. Luke Danes, friend, coffee-supplier, and crying shoulder finally admitted that he had feelings for her, and they started dating right away. Everything in Lorelai's life seemed to be lining up, but Rory was slowly going down. She started dating Logan Huntzburger, whose father was one of the biggest people in the newspaper business. He offered Rory an internship at one of his papers, but things got nasty when he told Rory she didn't have what it took to be a journalist.

Discouraged and lost, Rory dropped out of Yale. This caused a tremendous fight between her and Lorelai, who was afraid that her beautiful, intelligent, perfect daughter would end up being nothing more than her. Upset and unsure, she went to Luke for comfort and ended up realizing that he'd been the love of her life all along. She asked Luke to marry her and he said yes.

Even so, Lorelai was hurt and angry about Rory's decision, and the two didn't speak for a long time. Eventually, an old boyfriend, Jess Mariano, convinced Rory that she could do anything she wanted to. She went back to Yale midway through her Junior year, and managed to get caught up in only one semester. She and Lorelai mended fences, and everything seemed to be going along beautifully. It was then that Luke found out about his daughter, who was twelve at the time. He hid her from Lorelai, fearing that April would fall so in love with the witty, beautiful, hilarious Lorelai that she wouldn't want to spend time with him. Two months later, Lorelai found out about April, and things started to get worse. Communication broke down between Luke and Lorelai, and eventually it came to an ultimatum. Lorelai told Luke it was "now or never", that he marry her right away or not at all. He said he needed time to think, and she walked away.

Lorelai spent that night at the house of Rory's father, Christopher. Things went from bad to worse when Luke showed up the next day ready to elope and she had to refuse. Chris and Lorelai started dating right away, and within a few weeks, they had eloped in Paris, much to everyone (especially Rory)'s surprise. The marriage was short-lived, as Christopher eventually realized that Lorelai's heart was still, and always would be, Luke's. But this story isn't about Lorelai's relationships. It's about Lorelai and Rory.

Rory was nearing the end of her college years by this point, and she was getting ready to go out on her own. She was given a job almost immediately after graduation, and was preparing to leave on her first real assignment, a job on the campaign trail of Barack Obama. It was then that Lorelai and Rory had to say their first real goodbye, not knowing when they would see each other again. The town of Stars Hollow had a surprise going-away party for Rory, where Lorelai and Luke finally hashed things out and agreed to start again. It was the end of an era, but also the start of a brand new one.

On the morning that Rory left, she and Lorelai went to Luke's for breakfast, the way they had so many times before. As they sat in the familiar restaurant and sipped Luke's delicious coffee, it was clear that the bond they had couldn't ever be broken. Mother and daughter by blood and best friends by choice, Lorelai and Rory had shared one journey throughout their lives. This was just the next step of the journey, and they would walk it together. This is a story full of tears and triumph, laughter and sadness. This is a story of compassion and selflessness, or understanding and reaching out. This is a love story, the greatest love story of all.


End file.
